


melt back into night

by sxldato



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Porn, Asexual Sam, Cage Trauma, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Internalized Acephobia, Past Relationship(s), Past Torture, Slut Shaming, other tags omitted to prevent spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:33:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7525777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxldato/pseuds/sxldato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>He hadn't done this in what felt like eons. The last time he had, he'd been Sam from Before. Sam from Now was not the same person, not really. They shared the same body, same mind, same history, but Before-Sam and Now-Sam were separated by a gaping, yawning chasm that the devil called home. And Now-Sam was alone in a back alley, struggling to keep his hands from shaking, and wondering if he could ever be Before-Sam even for ten minutes.</em><br/> <br/>There are very few things Sam doesn't tell Dean about.<br/>But there <em>are</em> things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	melt back into night

**Author's Note:**

> /whispers softly but with a lot of feeling/ what the fuck  
> this is soul-crushing so legit take the tags seriously-- the ones i left out aren't the Serious Ones, they would just give away plot,, so yeah i'm p sure all the shit you'd have to worry about is up there  
> i beta-read it SO HARD FOR REAL i used this method i read about where you retype the entire story and it helps you catch awkward phrasing / adding stuff / taking away redundant stuff / etc and it was so. helpful. my god. i mean it was time-consuming and exhausting but holy shit i feel really good about this ?????  
> the title is inspired by a line from a Bob Dylan song, i think the original lyric is "melt back in the night" but that didn't vibe as well with me  
> idk that's all good luck and i apologize

This was what was left when he came back. 

He didn't notice, not at first. There were more important things going on, he took the back-burner as he usually did, and it was always hard to spot changes from a single snapshot. It's over time you realize you are not what you once were; you measure in years, in miles and gallons of gas, in the different ways you take your coffee, in heartaches and heartbreaks, in the people who come and go. You only realize who you are Now when you can look back in your rear view mirror and see it-- that person you had been, your Before, standing by the side of the road and waving as you take an off-ramp to... where? 

There was something different in him now, something he couldn't find hidden in all the duct-tape and safety pins, but it was there. It had taken twenty-two years for him to learn he'd been infected with demon blood, so at least he was used to this feeling. This uncertainty. He was used to not knowing himself. 

There was a newness to touch, a static shock. It faded the longer he was topside and once more comfortable in his skin, though, and it drifted from the forefront of his mind the way old issues often do. 

But Sam was no stranger to the concept of relapse.

-

"We're low on cash," Dean said. He'd finished his second recount of the wad of bills stored in their lockbox, and he emphasized the end of his sentence by slamming the Impala's trunk. "I thought we wiped the floor with those guys at that bar in Durango last week."

Sam shrugged, fidgeting with his backpack straps a little to occupy himself. To have an excuse to avoid Dean's eyes. "Maybe they didn't pay up the whole way?"

"I went through it before we left, alright, I'm not _stupid_. But either way, we don't have enough gas money." He slapped his open hand on the car and turned to the horizon, scuffing the gravel with the heel of his boot, looking ready to fight anything. "Fuck!"

"Dean, it's fine." Sam's heart thudded in his chest. "We can just hit up somewhere nearby." 

Dean grumbled. "I was shooting for a good six hours of sleep."

"You can sleep in the car if I drive tomorrow morning." 

Dean squinted at him, and Sam could barely breathe, and then-- "Only if you take darts this time. I'm tired of darts." 

Sam gave a shadow of a smile. "You'll say the same thing about pool in a month." 

"Can you take darts or not, bitch?" 

"'Course I can, jerk," Sam replied, doing his best not to flinch at the slur, or the way Dean threw his arm around his neck as they headed into the motel room. 

-

Whether he could come through tonight was out of the question. He  _had_ to. He  _would_ , he thought to himself as he finished washing his face at the bathroom sink. It would be easy; Dean was laser-focused when he played pool, which meant Sam could slip out the backdoor and slip back in without his absence ever being noticed. 

His pulse was wild as he stared himself down in the mirror, his white-knuckled grip matching the porcelain counter. He only looked a little less sick to his stomach than he felt. 

He had to tuck this part of himself away. He _had_ to. 

With a deep breath, he turned away from his reflection and began rummaging through his bag. 

"Get a move on, would ya?" Dean called from outside the door. "I gotta take a leak!"

"I'll be out in a second," Sam said, thanking whoever was listening that his voice didn't waver. He tucked the three items into his pocket, flushed the toilet and ran the water for a few seconds, then opened the bathroom door. 

"Took you long enough," Dean said, but it was lighthearted and Sam wasn't worried. "Keep it up and I might start thinking you're painting your face in there, Sammy." 

Sam snorted. "Right, okay." 

When they left for the night, his pockets felt a little heavier. 

-

Dean was fifteen minutes into a game of pool when Sam bated a catch. 

Like crossing the street, look back and forth and back again before you walk. There was no such thing as too much caution. 

He snuck around the corner and out of the bar unseen, all too aware of the shots he'd taken and how poorly they were settling in his stomach. He pressed his fingers to his temples, desperate to quell the dizziness. 

"It's routine," he told himself. "You've done this before, you know how it goes, you're fine. You're fine. Ten minutes and it'll all be over, you're _fine_." 

He hadn't done this in what felt like eons. The last time he had, he'd been Sam from Before. Sam from Now was not the same person, not really. They shared the same body, same mind, same history, but Before-Sam and Now-Sam were separated by a gaping, yawning chasm that the devil called home. And Now-Sam was alone in a back alley, struggling to keep his hands from shaking, and wondering if he could ever be Before-Sam even for ten minutes. 

He found a shattered mirror next to the dumpster and pulled the tubes from his pocket. 

Cherry bomb, black sapphire, moonlight. 

He snapped his hair tie against his wrist, just to be sure this was real, and used it to pull his hair back-- at the middle of the back of his skull instead of the nape of his neck, because people of any gender seemed to like having something to pull on. 

He was considering bailing because he grew more uncertain that he could do this as more time passed, but then the backdoor of the bar swung open and his bait stepped outside. Sam steeled himself, leaning against the brick wall and watching this stranger through hooded eyes and dark lashes. 

"Ground rule," he said, "You pay half now and half when we're done."

"No, c'mon, I pay after." 

Sam's eyes narrowed, catlike and dangerous in the dark. If there was one thing he hated more than not being in control, it was being in control and being questioned. "You pay me half now or I walk."

The man muttered to himself as he pulled out his wallet, and came up with a neat stack of bills. "You said one-twenty, right?" 

"If you don't wanna tip," Sam replied, and felt relief at the weight of the money placed in his hand. He'd forgotten how good he was at this, how goddamn  _easy_ it was. "But trust me," he continued as he counted his pay, "everybody tips." 

"Well, so far you're all tell and no show." 

Sam folded the bills and tucked them away in his boot. "You got somewhere else to be, sir?" 

The man was older than him, but only by a couple years. Sam knew, though, that a surefire way to stir up just about anybody's libido was to address them as a superior-- especially if it was spoken low and sultry, the way Sam had mastered it years ago. Dominant or no, control was a universal craving. 

"I just want to make sure I get my money's worth," the man answered, a little breathier than it had been at first.

"I wouldn't stress about it," Sam said, and backed them both up against the opposite wall before bringing their lips together. 

He felt the quick pace of the man's heart underneath his hand, that  _thud thud thud_ of arousal approaching a steep incline, and he smiled through his anxiety as his other hand slid down to the zipper of the man's jeans. 

What a fucking cakewalk, Sam thought. 

And then of course, his luck ran out. 

The man whispered his name into Sam's neck-- "I'm Michael, by the way--" his teeth grazing the delicate skin there, and Sam's brain all but short-circuited. His lungs flooded with seawater-memories, drowning him even though he was dry, even though he'd made it out of the ocean a long time ago. 

"Sam," he responded after he finally got the button and zipper undone. How stupid had he been to believe this night might go easy on him? Of course this man's name had to be Michael; Fate didn't get a good laugh unless Sam was swept up in what he was trying so hard not to remember.

And oh, he remembered it all; Stull Cemetery, Dean's blood on his knuckles, free-falling in darkness with nothing but an archangel to hold onto, Lucifer's ear-piercing screams of fury that rattled his bones. 

Lucifer's snakelike grin when he said he was still kind of proud of him, that what he'd done had taken serious guts, that very few folks had it in them to beat Satan himself. 

 _"So props to you on that one, kid,"_ the devil had said, burning blue and tracing lines of ice along Sam's bare collarbones.  _"But you understand, don't you? Fair's fair, and now it's my turn to beat_ you _."_

And beat him he had, and so much worse too, and it was all Sam could think about as he dropped to his knees.

No wonder this came so easily. Submission was his natural-born talent. 

Before, when he did this often, he would put up a wall in front of reality and pretend it was someone else, mostly when he was with women. He could lose himself in the softness of their skin, their smooth hair running through his fingers, the curves of their bodies, and play into the grief-riddled fantasy that it was Jess. He would taste them and picture her sprawled out on the bed they shared; her bright eyes and flushed cheeks, the rise and fall of her chest, the way she moved, the perfect cadence in which the single syllable of his name drifted from her lips.

Contented sighs and climactic cries. 

Even when he was with men he would stretch his imagination a little because sometimes he'd asked for Jess to fuck him, and she'd whispered syrup-sweet nothings in his ear as she rendered him into a gasping and twitching mess with her strap-on. She would tug on his hair, leave bruising kisses on his neck, open him up and leave him on the edge of orgasm. He'd lie there, whimpering and desperate and unable to touch himself. She'd tell him "beg for me, baby," and that alone would have him coming so hard he'd see the farthest clusters of stars. 

That was Before-Sam. Now-Sam couldn't do that. His memories of the Cage had tarnished it all, dirtied what he'd used as comfort. He couldn't imagine Jess without thinking of Lucifer and how he'd taken her face to sleep in his bed, to caress his skin, to speak in Jess's voice and tell him things were never going to change. Sam couldn't dissociate pleasure from pain now, and whenever he tried pulling a memory of Jess from the scattered files in his mind the devil would be there without fail, a twisted cross-section of what he wanted to hold dear and what he needed to forget. 

So tonight it was just him, this stranger, and centuries of torture riding on his conscience. Nothing to numb it. 

Every moan from Michael was agony for Sam, and the feeling of the dick in his hand disgusted him in ways it never used to. The knowledge that he had to put it in his mouth was almost enough to make him sick, and that scared him. To be so repulsed by what had come so naturally to him was confusing and scary and Sam was so, _so_ tired of feeling scared. 

He swallowed, blinking back flickering images of Lucifer bringing him to his knees, and dragged his tongue along the underside of Michael's cock.

What happened afterwards was a blur. Even ridden with trauma, Sam was damn good at his job, which meant it only took a few minutes. Michael rocked back and forth in Sam's mouth, hand at the back of Sam's skull (tugging on that damn ponytail Sam had given himself), and Sam hated every part of it. If it had been Before, maybe he would have been turned on a little, but it was Now and all he could register was the nausea and fear constricting his chest. 

Michael came with stuttering hips and swears muffled by his free hand, resting his head against the brick as Sam swallowed him, swallowed him, swallowed him. Coated the inside of himself with someone else. An odd sort of masquerade mask.

Sam pulled away once the orgasm was over, sat back on his knees, and wiped his wrist across his mouth. Come and lipstick smeared over the skin there. Sam blinked away tears. 

"Was it good?" He asked. He had to mask the trembling in his voice as arousal. 

"Amazing," Michael said, taking a moment to come down from the high before putting himself away and doing up his zipper. "You got a card?" He was feeling around in his pockets. "I might give you a call sometime. We could meet up at a nicer place." 

Sam took the rest of the money without getting to his feet and noted to himself that Michael tipped an extra twenty bucks. "I'm a one-stop kind of guy," he said. "No repeats. Never hit the same town twice." 

Michael nodded, looking slightly crestfallen. Sam wanted to say he wasn't made for nicer places, that you didn't take a bull to a china shop, that there was so much in his head that Michael could've never accounted for, and it was best to stay comfortable in oblivion.

Sam wished _he_ had done that. 

"Alright," Michael said. "Well... Thanks for the night, Sam." The concern on his face made it quite clear that Sam wasn't hiding as well as he'd thought, but Michael left all the same. 

Alone in the alley, he moved to sit against the wall with his head between his knees. The nausea swelled and he dry-heaved into his hand. 

He felt dirtier than the demon blood had ever made him feel. 

-

When Dean burst into the night with a sudden blare of rough words and jukebox music and clinking beer bottles, Sam was still on the ground with his head in his arms. He was so enveloped in panic and shame that he didn't bother trying to wipe his face before looking up, but he avoided meeting Dean's eyes directly. He didn't want to see the disgust and judgement in them.

"Sammy?" Dean spoke in a hoarse whisper, like someone had squeezed the air from his lungs, and it had more tears welling up and spilling over Sam's cheeks. 

"Hey, hey--" In two long strides Dean was right beside him, brushing his hair out of his face and wiping away inky tracks of tears. "Look at me." 

Sam's gaze felt weighted as he pulled it from a nondescript spot on the dirty concrete and settled on Dean. He looked stunned, maybe a little afraid, but that was all. No curled lip of revulsion, no once-over of scorn, nothing but shock and worry. Sam didn't understand, because his lashes were sooted and gleaming like oil slick from lingering wetness, and his lips were smudged a debauched, whorish shade of dark red. 

"Tell me who did this," Dean said, calm as Death, and Sam realized how this must have looked. He couldn't bring himself to say it aloud, to come clean and admit he'd used his autonomy as a means to degrade himself. All he did was raise his hand, touch a shaking index finger to the space between his collarbones, and watch Dean's face drain of color. 

"No." The way Dean said it was almost like an order, as if his determination could change reality if he tried hard enough. "No, you--"

"You weren't supposed to know," Sam managed through the lump in his throat. 

Dean looked absolutely shattered. He sat back on his heels, seemingly at a loss for what to do and with a million thoughts doing complex dances through his head. 

"Let's--" Dean stopped and exhaled-- "Let's get you outta here first, okay? We can talk about it later." 

It wasn't like all the other times they "promised" to talk later, and it wouldn't be while they were in the confines of the Impala, either. Sam was sure of that. This would be serious, a real sit-down-and-talk talk, and he would've been anxious about it if he could feel any more ashamed than he already did. He was still reeling from what he'd done and why it had screwed with him this badly, and he wanted to find safety in the crappy motel bed waiting for him and sleep for days. He didn't have room to be worried right now. 

He let Dean help him to his feet, and they trudged back to the car with their well-earned money weighing them down. 

-

Sam wasted no time in locking himself in the cramped little bathroom, blocking out Dean and all the questions he must have had. And Dean, thank God, didn't try to talk to him through the door. 

The taste of sex was still in Sam's mouth. 

He turned on the shower-- like it would really block out any noise-- and leaned over the toilet with one hand braced on the rim. He felt so shaken, so nauseous with fear and disgrace, that it didn't take long to be sick after putting his fingers down his throat. He choked and retched, bile and come spilling into the water and leaving him teary-eyed. 

"Sammy?" Dean, tentative and unsure. Strange. 

Sam coughed some more, then mustered up the strength to respond with a weak and wavering "yeah?"

"Doesn't sound like you're doing too good." 

No shit. "I'm alright." 

"... Okay." 

Sam turned off the shower and flushed the toilet, and it was loud and invasive, and he thought about how he could never seem to achieve peace and quiet. He sank down to his haunches and rested his forehead on the very edge of the porcelain bowl, staring down at the tile floor while he caught his breath and knit himself back together a bit. 

Once he got to his feet, he scrubbed his face clean of makeup and brushed his teeth three times, then opened the door. 

-

Dean was silent for a long time. Longer than Sam would've liked. 

They sat facing each other on opposite beds. Dean kept running his hands through his short hair, rubbing his forehead, the back of his neck, wiping down over his mouth. But his eyes wouldn't leave the carpet, unfocused and torn, and Sam felt progressively worse with each passing minute of dead air. 

"Sam." Dean sounded exhausted. Heartbroken. "What the hell is going on?"

Sam wanted to become smaller, to find somewhere to hide. "I'm sorry."

"Wasn't looking for an apology," Dean said. "I just wanna know." 

Dean already knew, Sam thought; all he wanted was to hear Sam say it. The words put a deep pressure on his chest, filled his bones with helium, swept up any coherent sand-grains of thoughts in a gust of wind, and he was lost. 

Come on. Peel at one of the corners and rip off the Band-Aid. 

"We needed the money," he murmured. 

"For the gas?" Dean sounded incredulous. "We could've taken care of it the way we usually do, you didn't have to--"

"It wasn't this one time," Sam spoke over Dean, wondered why Dean always asked him to talk only to cut him off a few seconds in. Dean needed to make up his mind. "It's. It's not new." 

If Dean had been pale before then whatever blood had been left in his face was definitely gone now, his freckles a dark contrast to the rest of his skin. "Don't joke, Sam." 

"I'm not joking." He was confused with his brain (that wasn't new, either). Moments ago he'd been struggling to speak, and now he _needed_ to. He needed Dean to understand. "That kind of stuff, that's what I do. Or what I've _been_ doing, I guess. Since I, um. Since I left school."

Dean wouldn't break eye contact and Sam wasn't sure if he preferred this to Dean not looking at him at all. "This's been going on under my nose for seven years?" 

Classic Dean, experiencing guilt for things that weren't his fault at all. Maybe it was easier to do that, rather than taking responsibility for what  _was._

"I don't think soulless-me did it," he said, "And this was the first time since I came back, so... Five years, give or take." 

"Yeah, 'cause that's so much better. Thanks for that." Dean put his face in his hands. Sam fought the instinct to reach out and touch, to offer some semblance of reassurance. If Dean thought he was dirty when he found out about the demon blood, Sam didn't want to know what Dean thought of him now. 

"We were always struggling to scrape by," Sam continued, pushing down on the pleading tone leaking out. "This way was easy and quick, and it was more honest than scamming people of money." 

"So that's it, huh?" Dean lifted his head, eyes narrowed. "You  _whore yourself out_ 'cause you think you're  _better_ than the other options?"

"That's not what I meant," Sam protested. The word  _whore_ resonated in him the same way a really hard slap from a loved one would. "It was-- it was what I felt like I could do. It gave us what we needed at the same time it made other people happy. That's why. Not 'cause I thought I was better than hustling pool. This was what felt right to me." 

Dean's brows were still furrowed, but it was more out of concern now as opposed to anger. There was a turmoil raging in him that Sam couldn't place, couldn't find the roots to. 

"Didn't seem to me like it felt right to you, not with the way I found you." 

Right. He'd been on the ground, crying. He'd almost forgotten. 

His cheeks grew hot, and he gripped his knees to stop his hands from shaking. Talking about Before had been simpler. "Things change, I guess," he said, and there was no way that was going to be enough. 

"Like what?" When Sam didn't answer, Dean went on. "Sammy, I'm no stranger to repressing shit, okay? You know that. I get that you wanna keep some stuff private. But  _not_ with stuff like this, not when it's hurting you." His volume dropped half a dozen notches. "Whoever you were with, did they hurt you?" 

"No,  _God_ , no." He didn't want to entertain the idea of how much worse it would've been if that had been true. 

"Then tell me. I can't keep fucking guessing."

"You don't wanna know," Sam croaked. Dean's heart was going to break if he did.

"Yes, I do." 

He met Dean's gaze, searching for a way to explain, utterly helpless. Damned if he did, damned if he didn't. 

Keeping it to himself wouldn't change anything. 

He took a breath-- a little shakier than he'd have liked-- and exhaled sharply. "After the Cage," he began, "after I got my memories back, I haven't... I can't..." 

This was going to be very, very difficult. 

"It doesn't feel right anymore. And I don't mean ethically," he added when Dean opened his mouth to step in, "I mean something in  _me_ is making it feel wrong. So I haven't-- I haven't been working, and... that's why we've been tight on money lately." He was getting more and more riled up. All he was feeling was rising in him, burning his throat. "It's hard to tell what money came from which of us since we lump it all together, so when I stopped getting my pay, you... you didn't notice." 

Sam tried to wipe his eyes as discreetly as possible and failed with flying colors. "I should've told you, or I should've played darts or pool or whatever else, but I've been so-- so confused and shaken up, and I was worried I'd lose if I tried to play like that and we couldn't afford to lose any cash--" 

"Sam." Dean was using his commanding tone, the one that Sam had been conditioned to pay attention to from the time he could walk. "Sam, you gotta slow down."

Sam shook his head, keeping his eyes covered because the tears wouldn't fucking stop, and this was the one thing he could do to control the situation. He would  _not_ cry in front of Dean  _again._

He heard the creak in Dean's bad knee in tandem with the old mattress springs as his older brother stood from the other bed and took a seat next to him. 

"Sammy, breathe." 

Dean had been a source of comfort since Sam could remember; it was a fundamental law in Sam's life, as real and unwavering as gravity. But tonight, when Dean's palm settled at the small of his back, he recoiled as if to avoid being stabbed. Sam knew what being stabbed actually felt like, and Dean's touch didn't feel that way, and yet--

"Stop, stop, I can't--"

_StopstoppleaseGodnodon't--_

The sensations were so real it was like he was back in the Cage: Lucifer's teeth in his skin, Lucifer yanking on his hair, pulling his head back and whispering in his ear  _scream for me, baby boy--_

"-- hey, hey, baby boy, look at me--" Dean was touching his face, cupping his jaw in calloused palms, and Sam was openly sobbing and shaking and fuck, fuck, this was getting worse instead of better and it wasn't stopping. It wasn't ever going to stop. 

"What'd they do to you?" Dean pulled him into his arms, holding him gently while he wept into Dean's shirt. That familiar home of plaid and gunpowder, whiskey and rye. "What'd they do to my baby brother?" 

Sam didn't have it in him to answer. He dug his fingers into Dean's back, terrified Dean would make him let go too soon. 

"Shh, it's alright." Dean rocked him gently, the way he used to when they were children, when Sam would get scared and need his big brother's safety. 

Before-Sam or Now-Sam, that hadn't changed. 

"You're okay, you're okay," Dean repeated in hushed murmurs. His fingers ran through Sam's hair and Sam thought of nothing else but the strangers' fists he'd allowed it to be held in. "I'm here, it's okay." 

The vice-grip of the one he knew, the one he'd said  _no_ to, and it hadn't mattered because his consent was a punchline. 

"You weren't _there_." Exhaustion took over and Sam loosened his hands from Dean's shirt. Tears continued to leak from his eyes. "Lucifer, and the things he did, you have no idea..."

"It's okay, Sammy."

It was as if all the air was sucker-punched out of his body. "It is _not okay._ " 

"I mean you don't have to talk about it if you don't wanna," Dean amended. "If you wanna tell me, you can tell me whenever. But you don't have to talk right now if it's-- too raw, you know?"

Sam tried to inhale, couldn't, and Dean swept his hand up and down Sam's spine to encourage breathing. 

"What I did tonight," Sam managed, "and those memories... it made me feel dirty." 

"Yeah, prostitution can do that."

And there it was. Sam had been hoping, praying it wouldn't turn out this way. He pulled out of Dean's hold and ran the heels of his hands over his eyes. The temperature of his blood was rising, and he really, _really_ didn't want to get angry on top of everything else. "Don't."

"What're you talking about? Don't do what?"

"Don't  _shame_ me," Sam said, hating the way his voice cracked. "I did it honestly, I stayed safe. It was my choice." 

"I'm not shaming you. And your choice was a bad one, Sam. _Really_ bad."

Sam's lower lip wavered and he bit down on it for a moment. "You always do this." 

" _Always?_ "

"When I wanted to go to school--"

"That's got nothing to do with--"

"Yes, it does!" Sam was still crying and it was hard to articulate himself while his throat was closed up, but now he was angry, and he needed to finish this. "It's never been about whether my choices are good ones! It's about them being  _my_ choices! And you take me when I'm at my lowest and you use it to argue your side, and that's not what I fucking need from you, Dean. It's not."

Dean's expression softened. "Sam..."

"No." Sam was on his feet now, putting space between them. His face was tinged red, his nose kept scrunching up, and his hands were shaking. He hated how he cried with his whole body, how little control he had. "I don't care if you think it was dumb, I don't care if you think it's disgusting. That's not what this is about, I'm--" Breathe, breathe, breathe-- "I'm reliving all this shit, and I need you, and you're hung up on the fact I'm a slut." 

"I never said--!"

"You called me a whore," Sam said, weak and dejected. Broken. "You know who else called me a whore--?"

"Stop, _stop_ \--"

"And what if I don't?" Tears were dripping off his chin and they still weren't stopping. He hadn't cried this much at once in years. Centuries. "It'd hurt, huh? For you to say 'stop' and for me to keep going? I bet that would really sting, not being listened to, not being respected. I can't  _imagine_ what that's like."

Dean remained blessedly silent. The stale motel air hung around them, suspended by tension. The clock on the wall counted off the seconds and headlights from cars outside illuminated the curtains as they blew down the highway. It was weird how the world continued even when time came to a halt for the Winchester boys. Weird how no one would miss them if they vanished, simply melted into the night where Before-Sam had been so at home.

Now-Sam was weak at the knees, heart racing, vision blurry. He gathered himself and Dean waited, not saying a word. Dean looked ashamed. Remorseful. Sam thought it was about damn time. 

"We're not supposed to be the same," he said finally, and the shattering of the quiet was painful. "We don't have to agree all the time, we... We make our own calls, Dean. We have to make our own choices at some point. I did what I did because it was what  _I_ wanted. You don't have to like it, it's fine that you would never do what I did, but you--" 

"I did." 

It was barely above a whisper, but it cut as sharp as the hunting knives in their jackets, and the ground seemed to be ripped from beneath Sam's feet. 

"... What?"

"I did." Dean spoke a little louder, but not with any more strength. "When we were younger, I'd... Sometimes there wasn't enough cash for food, or you were sick and needed medicine, or we were behind on rent, and..."

Sam's eyes, red-rimmed and watery, grew large. He took a step forward. "Dean--"

"I was eighteen by then, it was okay," he insisted, waving his hand haphazardly as if he could tuck the past under the rug again with one simple motion. "I left it behind a long time ago, it doesn't matter now, I just..." 

Sam's legs gave way and he plopped down on the bed. "Did you tell Dad? Did _he_ tell you to?" 

"No, _no_ , he never had any idea. And that's not the point." Dean's eyes were closed. When he opened them, they were glassy and staring off into nothing. "What I did back then, it was to keep you from it. I sold myself out so you'd never have to." 

Sam's stomach sank all the way to his toes. "Dean, I didn't know."

"You weren't supposed to." He cleared his throat, shifted his weight on the bed. "But that's why it... I dunno, it rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't want that kinda stuff to reach you. So you saying it was your choice, you doing it 'cause you _wanted_ to..." Dean shrugged, and Sam watched helplessly as a tear ran through the scatter of freckles on Dean's face. "I guess I didn't keep you from much of anything." 

"It wasn't hurting me, Dean, you gotta understand that," Sam insisted. "It didn't make me feel dirty. It's the Cage that screwed everything up, and you couldn't have saved me from that." His heart stuttered. "Lucifer, he--"

Dean's gaze snapped up to meet his. "You don't have to."

Sam's shoulders sunk in relief. He'd never said it out loud, had barely admitted it to himself, and after the night he'd had he wasn't sure he could make it through if he tried to form the words.

"Just. Promise me," Dean said, "no more, okay? Please, don't do it anymore."

"I couldn't even if I wanted to." Sam tried for a smile and it came out as more of a grimace. "The devil fucking broke me."

"Nah, I wouldn't be so sure." Dean reached over, tucked a stray piece of hair behind Sam's ear. "I mean. You're still here, aren't you?"

-

The next morning when Sam rolled over to look at the digital clock, he noted dazedly that it was already eleven. He squinted, adjusting to the light streaming through the windows, and looked around for Dean. 

"We were supposed to be on the road by eight," he said, blinking and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

Dean was on the other bed, fully dressed with his bag slung over his shoulder and listening to his Walkman. When Sam spoke up, Dean tugged the headphones off and let them hang around his neck. "Huh?"

"Leaving. Three hours ago. Ring a bell?"

Dean snorted, like Sam's remembrance of their established plan was utterly ridiculous. "I might be an asshole, but I know when my little brother needs to rest."

A warm feeling spread through Sam's body. They didn't say it often, so sometimes he needed to be reminded.

Dean loved him-- would always love him. 

"But now that you're awake, you gotta haul ass," Dean said, then threw a granola bar at Sam's face. 

Sam appreciated the pretense of normalcy. 

-

They were pulling onto the freeway when Dean brought it up again. 

"You know something else, Sammy?"

"Yeah?"

Dean glanced over at him from the driver's seat, and his grin was wicked.

"Dean, what?"

"If we _ever_ see the devil again, I'm gonna kick his ass."  

**Author's Note:**

> hoeboy!sam is supposed to be a happy/sexy AU and this is not happy/sexy and i am Very Sorry


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